I focus almost exclusively on PvP, whether solo, small gang, or large bloc warfare. In the past, I've been a miner, mission runner, and faction warfare jockey. I'm particularly interested in helping high-sec players get into 0.0 combat.

Thursday, March 24, 2016

Just Because I'm Trying to Kill You…

Eve really is a funny game. One of the first rules you hear
is that you can’t trust anyone. Every pilot who isn’t a blue is trying to kill
you. If you don’t learn that lesson by rote, you learn it by experience. We disregard
dscan and a search for probes at our own peril.

But on the other hand, the status of another pilot can
change in an instant. One day, you’re all part of the same alliance, but the
next, a CEO decides to pull his corp and suddenly you’re enemies. Back when I
was in Razor, we experienced a similar thing when hirr decided to leave the
alliance. Instead of an orderly evac and well-wishing, they decided to burn
their bridges, cloaky camp our space for a few weeks, and kill people who were
allies a day before. Such is life.

But, ultimately, that only tells part of the story. Reality
in Eve isn’t about what alliances and corporations do, but what happens on the
individual level. It’s about friends becoming enemies overnight. It’s about
alliances of convenience springing up. “When did we blue Black Legion?” I
remember asking once. All of a sudden, the people you were killing are your
allies, only to change when the moment passes.

The consequences of that add a level of complexity missing
from other games. Sure, some players just hate PL or Goonswarm, and will never
see beyond it. Every pilot with either in their history is a hated enemy, never
to be redeemed or to remove the stain.

But for most of us, we recognize that pilots come and go.
Corp or alliance membership is often temporary, and it doesn’t do to burn your
bridges.

And, on occasion, that kind of attitude wins you support
when you most need it.

Earlier today, I was roaming through Black Rise in my Curse.
Ever since I was caught by a Curse at a Guristas Transportation site, I wanted
to do the same to someone else. With its dscan immunity, the Curse is a
fantastic little ship for catching prey unawares. Their first indication that
you’re nearby is when you appear on grid. And by then, it’s usually too late to
do anything about it.

Jumping into Hykanima, I quickly narrowed my dscan and saw a
Vexor and a Ferox at a Transportation site. In local, a couple pilots gave each
other “gf”s, but both ships remained on a narrow dscan. Obviously, they weren’t
killing each other.

I did a quick calculation, and felt I had a chance of
killing at least one of them – the Vexor – if I played my cards right. I’d put
my TD on the Ferox, my point and neuts on the Vexor, and hope to mitigate
damage long enough to take it down. So, I warped in.

The Vexor, though, was by itself in the first room, about 50
km off the button. I started to burn to him, but he was gone long before I got
within range. Careful to sip my capacitor, I made my way to the acceleration gate
to the second room. The Ferox was still there.

And he was a goon.

When I landed, the Ferox was about 23 km away, so I promptly
pointed him and flashed the colors – the tracking disruptor, three medium
neuts, and point – as I launched my drones.

For those of you who haven’t flown neut ships before, fights
have a very different cadence. Typically, you’ll notice that your ship does
very sub-par damage at first, but at some point, if everything goes according
to plan, the enemy ship suddenly begins to drop quickly. That point, of course,
is when you cap them out. Before you can blink, the fight’s usually over.

So, I wasn’t alarmed when the Ferox was tanking me pretty
well at the beginning, and I kept my cool. Flying a Curse requires that you pay
attention to several things at worst. Chief is the need to manage your
capacitor, pumping your cap recharger as needed and shutting off some of your
neuts as the fight progresses. You also need to watch your drones, though, to
make sure they aren’t being targeted by your enemy and are still following your
commands. Depending on your fit, you also have to watch your tank. In my case,
I was fit with an X-Large ASB that repaired about 85% of my shield each cycle;
to avoid wasting any, I had to wait until my shields were just about gone. It’s
effective, but another thing to watch.

To my eternal shame, one thing I didn’t watch was my range,
so I had the pleasure of watching my Ferox target warp out at 40% structure.

GFs were tossed around local, and I offered a little
ridicule at myself. He landed on the station to repair himself just as I did,
so I knew I had lost him. At this point, I was feeling a little low. While it’s
invigorating to score a kill, letting one escape from your own foolishness is
just about the worst feeling I experience, even worse than losing a ship
myself.

But the only way past it is to move on, so I did a quick
dscan again. The Vexor had come back after we left, and was at the site now. Dscan
also had a Cerberus and Drake, but as I narrowed, only the Drake was at the
site with the Vexor.

Now, a Drake and Vexor was a little more than I felt
comfortable handling, particularly since both were fresh to the site and likely
to be very close to the warp-in beacon. I –might- be able to kill the Vexor if
I got lucky with range, but 250 million is a lot to risk. While my tracking
disruptor could neutralize much of a Ferox’s damage, a Drake’s missiles
wouldn’t be affected.

I needed help. And the answer was obvious.

“Want to team up to take down that Vexor and Drake?” I asked
the Ferox pilot I had been shooting only a couple minutes before. It was
ballsy, and in any other game, the other pilot would curse me and would never
dream of trusting me.

But this is Eve. “Sure, let’s do it,” he replied. We fleeted
up, and he was so eager he actually beat me to the site. He took the gate
first, and grabbed point on the Vexor, who no doubt suspected that he and his
Drake friend could take a lone BC.

Then, my little old invisible-to-dscan Curse landed, and
ruined their day. The Drake immediately began burning off, with me in hot
pursuit, while my neuts capped out the Vexor and the Ferox applied most of the damage. I began to
close range, getting to within 30 km before he finally warped off.

The fight now over, this was the moment of truth. Would we
turn on each other? I’ve spoken before about how I’ve tried and failed at being
duplicitous, so I wasn’t about to go back on my word. For his part, the Ferox
hadn’t fared very well during the first fight, and wasn’t eager to risk the
successful result.

Of course, I pulled range from him, just in case.

But, wouldn’t you know, our temporary alliance held. We
wished each other well and went on our merry way – myself back to Nisuwa, and
him to run more sites. A Goon and an ex-pat cooperating together? I had to
check for dogs and cats dancing together in the streets.

In speaking to him afterwards, he shared that he recently
came back and had dedicated himself to becoming better at solo PvP. I’ve found
there to be a code among solo PvPers… they tend to honor 1v1s and their word,
when given. After all, to really enjoy true solo PvP – no links, no alts – you
need to be in it for the challenge. And taking advantage of someone’s trust
isn’t challenging; it undercuts the source of value in those kinds of
engagements.

Very few people would ever expect a goon to honor an
agreement or play with any sense of honor. They have a reputation for
exploiting and abusing everything, being out to ruin everyone else’s game, and
generally operating on a “no apologies given or required” approach. As I
mentioned up top, the reality always comes down to the players. Players
interact, not alliances. And when a solo PvPer interacts with another, if
they’re being true to the reasons that bring them to solo PvP, they tend to
treat each other fairly.

After all, just because we’re trying to kill each other
doesn’t mean we have to be uncivilized. Algamel gets that, and he has my
respect for it.

3 comments:

I like that story, I am in a WH corp and whilst I enjoy the company I often find that scheduled roams etc are not convenient for me because of multiple reasons, so sometimes I go off looking for a solo fight. Although given the amount of low and null sec entrances we find it is difficult to find a fight, if I get blobbed then fair enough, but I am not going to attack a blob so to speak, but when I hear about these events like you describe here, I hope for the day that I can experience the same kind of thing.

You probably don't know the entire story behind hirr, while I can't say I do but I can offer what happened from our point of view:

We were not happy with the lack of pvp and pve central culture of razor and realized our corp's existence could be in jeopardy if we stayed any longer. After discussion we were planning to leave peacefully and keep razor blue due to the +5 years friendship we had ever since morsus mihi days, but torika decided to kick us without warning to stuck all of our Corp asset in s-e. So after that rude awakening the only way to vent our anger and pain from being betrayed is to camp the system for a bit while we reorganize and try to catch a breath.

Of course there could be some horrible misunderstanding between razor leadership and ours, but I don't believe most line members know what actually happened, I mean how can one single Corp endanger the entire alliance? Specially when that alliance is ancient and have it own culture

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